A Guide To Understanding Solicitor Costs In Litigation

A Guide To Understanding Solicitor Costs In Litigation

How much does it cost to hire us?

The first point we would like to make is that speaking to us is:

FREE

You can call and speak to one of our specialist solicitors about your issue without charge or obligation.

We will give you an assessment of the issues you face, give you information, based on our experience, about the first steps to solving your dispute, give you guidance on using the court system, as well as detailed information on costs. This first meeting usually lasts about 30 to 45 minutes, with a chance to speak again if you have any further questions.

Please watch our video below.

Our charges

After that, if you would like to instruct us, we will charge based only on the time we spend on your matter.

Our hourly charging rates are as follows:

Christopher Burgon (25 years’ experience as a solicitor) “Grade A”	£400 per hour
Elle Berrett (14 years’ experience as a solicitor) “Grade A”	£400 per hour
Melissa Danks (21 yesrs’ experience as a solicitor) “Grade A”	£400 per hour
Paralegal	£195 per hour

Compare our rates to the Solicitors’ Guideline Houry Rates from HM Courts and Tribunal Service. For the purposes of the Guideline Rates, we are considered as a “London 2” firm.

£2,400

We will ask you for a payment on account of costs of £2,400. This is held in the firm’s client account. A client recently described this as being like a deposit.

Solicitor Fees

We will give you the best information we can, as soon as possible, about the likely costs of your action. We will give you an estimate of costs for each stage of your case. We will let you know before we reach that estimate if we need to revise it and will only increase it if you agree.

No two cases are the same. So, we will give you an estimate of costs that is based on the unique facts of your case. As a guideline though, we have set out some examples of the level of costs of the cases we handle for our clients.

£8,000

If your case is relatively simple or you are just obviously in the right and the other side puts up only minimal resistance then we estimate your costs will be roughly £8,000 excluding VAT.

Examples of recent cases like this are below:

Dishonest architect

We helped a builder leave a property practice when he discovered that his business partner; an architect, had been acting dishonestly. We helped our client deal with a number of threats from his now ex-business partner, which were quickly shown to be groundless and helped our client leave the business with all of the clients and contacts he had brought to the practice.

Debt owed by a large corporation

We worked for an engineering company that was owed in excess of £60,000 by a major corporation. The corporation was being deliberately obstructive about payment. From the information our client gave us, this was seen to be because someone within their organisation was probably trying to cover up a mistake made by them.

We engaged with the legal department of the corporation and set out our client’s case with a threat of court action. After some deliberately obstructive correspondence, the corporation saw that they had no reasonable defence to the action and paid the debt.

How long?

We estimate a case like this takas between one and three months to reach a conclusion.

£30,000

If your case is more complex and/or the other side decide to put up a bit of a fight, then costs will increase. How much costs will increase by is dependent on the facts of each individual case. As we have set out above, some cases are simple and finish quickly and as we set out below, others take a long time to settle and costs can be significant.

As a guideline, based on the recent cases we have dealt with, if you have a committed opponent and some complex issues to resolve but the case settles before court proceedings are issued, we estimate your costs will be around £30,000 excluding VAT.

Minority shareholder leaving a company

Our client was a director and minority shareholder in a successful company.

She found out that the other directors and shareholders, who were also members of her family, were taking funds from the company and sending them to a second company that she was not a shareholder of. The others were claiming fraudulently that these transfers were for expenses that simply didn’t exist.

Our client was the main source of revenue for the company with the best client contacts and we helped her stand up to intimidation and bullying within the company and helped her deal with being dismissed as a director and employee.

We were able to negotiate a sale of her shares for more than £100,000, ensure that there were no restrictions with her dealing with the clients of the first company and helped her set up a new business, owned 100% by her.

How long?

The case mentioned above took nine months from us being instructed to settlement.

£120,000

If you are faced with a committed opponent, it is likely that you will have to issue court proceedings if you want to win your dispute.

After court proceedings are issued each party must set out their position in either a Claim Form and Particulars of Claim or a Defence, collectively known as the Statements of Case. After this stage of a court action, the next step is usually a Costs and Case Management Conference (CCMC). At the CCMC a timetable to take the case to trial will be set along with a budget for the anticipated work.

Our experience is, at this point, when the costs of continuing and the strength (or weakness) of the respective cases becomes clearer, the parties in the proceedings put most effort into reaching a settlement

We have worked with a number of clients in recent years where we have helped them achieve success at this stage. Our estimate of costs for settling at this stage is around £120,000 excluding VAT.

Inheritance dispute with step-brothers

We helped a son obtain a fair share of his father’s estate, after his father’s second wife conned him into signing a second will when he was ill, giving most of his estate to his step-sons.

Professional negligence against solicitor

We helped a landlord bring a professional negligence action against the solicitor he had instructed to help remove a problem tenant and defeat her claim for excessive costs.

How long?

The cases mentioned above, from us being instructed to settlement, took twelve months and twenty one months respectively, to conclude.

£150,000 plus

If your case is relatively complex and the sums involved are worth say £200,000 or more, our estimate is that if the matter went to trial, the case would probably take around two years and if the trail lasted for two or three days, your costs would likely be more than £150,000.

Remember though, only a very small minority of court actions ever go to trial.

How long?

For a case to go to trial can take from one to two years and possibly longer.

Recovery of costs

We appreciate that these are significant amounts of money to spend on legal fees. We suggest that it is useful to think of money spent on legal costs as an investment.

It is possible to recover a proportion of the money you spend on legal fees from the other side. We will give you all the information you need about recovery of costs to help you make the decisions you need to. It is a complex subject but the general principle is that the loser must pay the winner costs. So, succeeding at trial means that you will recover at least a proportion of the costs from the other side in addition to the Judgment in your favour.

Conditional Fee Agreements

We offer Conditional Fee Agreements to our clients if we know that they have a good case, that justice will be served if they win and they need some assistance to see the case to a favourable conclusion.

We do not offer Conditional Fee Agreements to new clients.

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Meet the Christopher Burgon team